They’re similar gifts to the noshing public, places where quality, care and freshness trump all else. The best small-scale bakeries can help define a community — places such as Culbert’s of Goderich and Spicer’s of Aylmer. Ditto breweries such as MacLean’s Ales of Hanover, Block Three of St. Jacobs, and, at the risk of pumping this place ad infinitum, the already iconic Cowbell of Blyth.

And in cities, how about La Noisette and Anderson Craft Ales of London?

There’s mutual love between the two east London businesses, so much so that’s it’s led to recipes where Anderson beers serve as an ingredient. They’re not the first to link beer and baked goods, but they seem to be the first to bring it to the forefront in this neck of the woods.

“People have been pairing beer with food for years and years,” Courtney Orser, Anderson’s event manager, said in an email. “Beer is essentially liquid bread and all of the flavours found in malt can be found in a bakery. It’s a natural pairing.”

But beer and bread was just the starting point for Tabitha Switzer of La Noisette.

“We wanted to show that it doesn’t have to be restricted to certain foods,” she said. “There are so many foods in the world and such a huge variety of beers. There’s so many pairing opportunities.

“Stouts are known to do well with chocolate and/or coffee. That’s something always found in a baker’s pantry. So that was easy to find ideas. IPA goes well with citrus flavours, and again, lemon or lime is a very common baking ingredient. The easiest way of pairing is knowing your beer. So we worked quite a bit with some of the guys at Anderson’s and asked a lot of questions about their beers. Although we enjoy drinking it, we’re no experts of beer. It was fun throwing out ideas to them for baked goods and they almost immediately knowing which beer would go best.”

Anderson recently hosted a special event to celebrate beer in baking and baked goods pairings. Featured were sweet and savoury items available at the bakery and a few specially created recipes, which demonstrated how beer-baked goods can either place the beer taste subtly in the background or up front and obvious.

“We haven’t met a beer that has stumped us yet,” Tabitha said. “But with that being said, baking is a little bit of chemistry. Knowing how the beer will react to the other ingredients is helpful. Adjusting things like baking soda or baking powder might be required, or if you’re substituting beer for another liquid, it can change the consistency or colour of the final product.”

Anderson and La Noisette were brought together in part through the Forest City Cookbook, a crowd-funded project by photographer and foodie Alleska Robies that helped four local breweries connect with London’s top chefs. Labatt is among the many partners for the project. (Check out the cookbook project at forestcitycookbook.com).

It’s all a sweet idea, enough to whet our appetite while we wet our whistles, in a crafty kind of way.